Social Media Today:The State of Social Media Marketing Highlights: 5 Lessons from Social Marketing Leaders here are 5 key lessons from the Social Marketing Leaders that other marketers can learn from and follow.

USAToday:What can we learn from Angry Birds?– In studying the benefits of video games, the White House is finding video games make an exceptional tool for teaching a huge array of skills and content.

Mashable: How Social Media Could Improve Public Safety – “To understand the spectrum of social media applicability and the challenges it poses to public safety, it’s helpful to think how the public safety context is different than traditional social media usage. First, public safety is event or incident-driven, whether for prevention, reaction or investigation. Second, public safety is really a unique form of customer service in which the expectation of service is very high, everyone expects to receive the same level of service, regardless of his frequency of use or willingness to pay for it, and the cost of failure can be astronomical.”

Dealbook: Those Millions on Facebook? Some May Not Actually Visit – On the first page of Facebook’s prospectus for its sale of stock to the public, it pegs the number of its “monthly active users” at a whopping 845 million people. The social networking site arrives at an even more astounding number when it comes to “daily active users”: 483 million people. Those are some huge numbers. If it is hard to believe that so many people are clicking on facebook.com every day, that’s because well, they aren’t, exactly. Those eye-popping numbers should have an asterisk next to them.

Business Insider: LinkedIn Just Hit 150 Million Registered Users – LinkedIn now has more than 150 million registered users, the company announced today. LinkedIn adds around 10 new members every 5 seconds, according to LinkedIn’s senior vice president of product Deep Nishar.

Health Care News Feed: Internal social media boots the bottom line You know it’s important for a company to interact with its customers on social media, but should companies connect with employees through internal social media, too?

Pew Internet and American Life Project: Peer-to-Peer Healthcare and the C3N Project Three-quarters of US adults go online. A majority of US households have broadband internet access. Eight in ten adults have a cell phone. (Video)

Mashable:‘App Economy’ Has Created Nearly Half a Million Jobs Since 2007 [STUDY] – “That app you use to play Words with Friends on your phone or book a reservation using Open Table might be giving the American economy a nice boost, at least according to a new survey by TechNet. The new “app economy” has created about 466,000 jobs in the United States since 2007, according to the survey.”

Search Engine Land: Goodbye Google+ People & Pages, Hello Knowledge Graph Box – “Google’s Knowledge Graph has claimed its first “victim,” if you will: The content box that showed “People and Pages On Google+” is gone. In its place? A variety of Knowledge Graph-related content that will show up differently depending on the search query.”

Mashable: New Facebook Integration Shows What Your Friends Are Learning – “The Pinterest-like website for learning that the founders of Grockit launched Thursday now has a Facebook integration that shows your friends what you’re learning. Learnist, the newly launched product, allows anyone to compile content pieces onto a board (they call it a “learning”) that may look familiar. Unlike Pinterest, however, creators suggest a path in which to consume each content component. Users can check off each component as they go or “re-add” it to one of their own learnings.”

Social Media Today: Facebook Promotions: Know the Rules – “Running contests on Facebook is a major source of confusion amongst Facebook Page owners. Facebook terms are a little unclear and many Businesses have no clue at all about the rules they need to follow. By breaking Facebook Terms, you run the risk of having Facebook shut down your Business Page. Make sure you’re familiar with all the rules.”

Mashable:Motorola Under Google: 3 Possible Futures – “But in the same note, Page says it’s replacing Motorola’s CEO with a “longtime Googler” and several other key executives will be replaced as well. Google appears to have big plans for Motorola Mobility, but given that newbie CEO Dennis Woodside doesn’t have a strong history in telecommunications (he began his career as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer, according to his LinkedIn profile) or Android, it’s unclear what those plans are. I see three possibilities:”

Social Media Today: Social Metrics: Market to the Head? Impossible. – “Newsflash: In case you haven’t heard, social marketing is not just about likes, shares and mentions anymore. The ways that brands promote and engage via social media is evolving and so are the ways to measure key metrics and ROI—and with more and better tools on the market, it’s getting faster and easier to acquire data.”

techPresident: Changing Winds for Open Data at the National Weather Service – “The National Weather Service is going to update its weather alerts for the 21st century.Weather data has long been held up as a prime example of how government data can spur private enterprise, as an entire industry has evolved to interpret and package meteorological data coming from government sources. Now, the Weather Service is updating how it offers up that data for a next-generation weather industry.”

Mashable:Obama Answers Twitter Questions Himself – “President Barack Obama is no stranger to Twitter; he held his first Town Hall on the microblogging network, at the White House, complete with Master of Ceremonies Jack Dorsey, just under a year ago. But that was easy — Obama got as much time and space as he wanted to answer the questions posed on Twitter. How about the president replying in tweet form, in real time? Thursday, with his reelection campaign getting into gear, Obama decided to respond to a few questions via Twitter while in Iowa — and this time, it was his fingers on the keys.”

HowTo.gov: How Internet Users Spend Time Online [infographic] – “The folks at Go-Gulf.com show some of the amazing numbers that provide a snapshot of how people spend their time online. The average Internet user spends around: 22% of their time on social networking sites, 21% on searches (Google gets 1 billion search queries a day!), 20% on reading content and 19% on emails and communication.”

Mashable:Bubble Robots Move Using Lasers [VIDEO] – “This isn’t your typical artificial intelligence robot, but scientists at the University of Hawaii have created bubble “robots” that can be directed using lasers. They hope to use the bubble robots to build micro-structures. And once the bubble bots are no longer of use, they can be popped.” (way to go NIST!)

B To B Online: Social media marketing surges, legacy channels impacted – “Social media, initially a curiosity, is an increasingly important avenue for marketing interaction between marketers’ brands and their customers and prospects, according to a new study from BtoB. The study also contains a number of surprises about which platforms are favored by marketers and social’s impact on legacy channels.”

Mashable: In-App Ads: Balancing the Needs of Advertisers and Publishers – “In Mashable‘s new video series, Behind the Launch, we’re taking cameras behind the scenes at Vungle, an in-app video advertising startup. New episodes air every Monday and Wednesday, but we’re running bonus footage throughout the series to provide a deeper look into the startup experience. This week, Vungle hired David Oh as director of business development. Now, David and Colin Behr — who joined Vungle as “the closer” a few weeks ago — are fleshing out the business model and forecasting revenues for Vungle.”

Business Insider: This 21-Year-Old May Have Cracked The Future Of Mobile Advertising – “In a nutshell, Kiip’s banners appear in a mobile game once a user completes a level. The ad offers the user a reward for their gaming success: a free bottle of Propel, for instance, was offered by Pepsi inside the MapMyFitness app for every eight miles run by a user.”

MarketingProfs: Four Tips for Subject-Line Success – “Even experienced email marketers agonize over subject lines—polishing, editing, tweaking, and perfecting 50-character phrases until they’re just right. After all, a single word can make the difference between a subscriber’s indifference and interest. So how do you get recipients to open your messages? In this post at Mass Transmit, Anthony Schneider outlines eight rules for creating better subject lines.”

CMO.com: After Almost 20 Years Of Banner Ads, Who Is Clicking? – “Internet users have been presented with banner ads for nearly 20 years, but who’s clicking them and who’s not. A new infographic from Prestige Marketing reveals some insights on who clicks ads and the reasons many don’t click.”

Social Media Today: Social Media Is Taking Over Search & SEO – “How strong of a role does social media play in search and SEO? There are still many B2B companies not participating in social media. It doesn’t help our sales effort, we cannot quantify it, our target doesn’t use it and the list goes on. I would argue that without participation in social media your SEO and search effort is working at 50%. If you think sophisticated audiences aren’t using social, then think again. Over 5 million high networth investors use LinkedIn. According to a Hubspot 2011 survey of 611 advisors, 61% said they had landed a new client directly from LinkedIn.”

Social Media Today: 5 Hidden Features of Facebook – “It’s a little like Facebook’s version of the Easter egg extra you can find in a DVD of one of your favorite movies. Only instead of getting inside director’s jokes that you might not have known otherwise, these features are here to make the experience of having a profile on Facebook one you can customize deeper while still protecting the privacy of. And that’s saying a lot considering that not every Facebook user has yet to convert their home page to the timeline and tailor it to fit their professional and personal needs.”

Mashable:What You Can Learn From Zynga’s Cool Company Culture [PICS] – “Mashable took a tour of Zynga, a wildly popular distributor of some of the most played social and mobile games. When it comes to perks, the father of FarmVille doesn’t skimp. In fact, Zynga’s office is so loaded with perks and amenities; it would make working from home a bore.”

Mashable:Ecommerce in China: How the World’s Biggest Market Buys Online – “Online retail generated $121 billion in sales in China last year, up 66% from 2010, according to Barclays Capital. The size of China’s ecommerce market is expected to more than triple over the next three years, with sales reaching $420 billion by 2015. That’s 20% more than what the U.S.’s ecommerce market is forecast to bring in that year.”

Mashable: Why Digital Accelerates Political Change – “While this mindset is completely understandable, it seems we’ve forgotten the most important lesson from the past twenty years of Internet experience: Profound change is within our grasp if we are able to make the intellectual connection between the power digital provides us and our political aspirations as a community.”

Open Forum: Ready, Set, Research! [VIDEO] – “When most people think of market research, they typically envision a large company with a big budget. What do you do if you’re a small company with no budget, and you have an idea you want to test before launching? Sharpen your pencils and get ready to take notes on how you can master the art of market research on the cheap.”

Mashable:The Best U.S. Cities for Tech Jobs Might Surprise You [VIDEO] – “Are you a fan of lush, green surroundings and rain more than half the year? Seattle topped Forbes‘ list of places where tech jobs are growing. And not just tech jobs, but all of the STEM field — science, technology, engineering and math. Forbes tapped the Praxis Strategy Group to create a system to rank areas of the U.S. where the technology sector has experienced growth to provide a possible look into the future.”

VentureBeat: Google+ wants to be your new Flickr — Google+ is succeeding in small bursts, feature by feature. As a social network competing with Facebook it’s a flop, but its video-chat tool Hangouts is a winner. Now photo sharing is poised to be the service’s next breakout hit.

Mashable: Forget Google Instant: In the Future, Search Engines Will Read Your Habits – “Wolfram Alpha CEO Stephen Wolfram’s vision of what the word “Instant” could mean for search is a bit more literal. He envisions some type of search engine that could — through data maps of personal data history — provide reports automatically when they’re needed without an explicit query. He counts this sort of “preemptive delivery of information” among “a large number” of projects the data company has been working on.”

SearchEngineWatch: Google April Fools’ Day Pranks 2012: 8-Bit Maps, Chrome Multitask Mode & More! – “For Google, April Fools’ Day is the annual launch day for a slew of gag products and hoax services you’ll likely never see in real life. Google’s practical jokes began a day early in 2012, with 8-Bit Google Maps, Chrome Multitask Mode making their debut, then continued early this morning with the YouTube Collection, Google Racing, Click-to-Teleport search ads, and much more.”

Mashable: 4 Facebook Features Marketers Can’t Afford to Ignore – “If you have a brand or a business to market chances are you’re using a social media management application to monitor online mentions, schedule updates, and generate reports. But if you really want to be an effective marketer, you need to develop a deeper understanding of which networks are most vital to your company, and what network features are key. In Facebook’s case, we’re talking about some powerful community management components that are unmatched by its competitors, and often overlooked by marketing pros. Here are the four that simply can’t be ignored.”

Mashable:White House to Developers: Help Us Build Job Search Apps – “The White House has a request for app developers around the country: help young people find summer jobs. It’s the administration’s first-ever “Code Sprint,” an open-source development free-for-all — sort of like an Iron Chef competition for coders.”

HowTo.gov: Changing the Way We Communicate at Work – “A Digital Gov University webinar, Yammer: The Power of Social Networking Inside Government Offices, found Yammer can change the way we communicate internally. Yammer helps people collaborate more easily and better engage with their coworkers.”

Third-party apps like HootSuite just got a little less relevant with an update from Facebook that lets Page admins schedule posts. A new help center page from Facebook also outlines how brand pages can now dole out specific duties to multiple page admins, each with varying degrees of permissions.

The chart below outlines the new roles of manager, content creator, moderator, advertiser and insights analyst.

Mashable: How (RED) United the Social Web in the Fight Against AIDS – “In the non-profit’s short history, it has embraced what it means to be a distinctive brand in the social space. RED is the only non-profit with more than 1 million followers on both Twitter and Facebook, having more than 3 million followers on all platforms, including Foursquare, Instagram, Pinterest and Myspace.”

Amex Open Forum: 7 Biggest Mistakes in E-Mail Marketing – “You probably aren’t expecting someone from Constant Contact to say e-mail is dead. Fair enough. And you are right: e-mail is definitely alive and well. However, you might hear differing opinions on the subject depending on which small business owner you talk to. This is because there are different approaches on how to best use e-mail to reach customers and prospects. In many ways, e-mail is dead for a lot of small businesses–not because of the tool, but because of the business’s approach.”

Mashable: Facebook Rolling Out ‘Trending Videos’ – “A new “trending videos” feature is being rolled out to some Facebook users, according to a report from TheNextWeb. Once you’ve got the new feature, it will auto-populate with videos your friends are watching on Facebook’s Open Graph apps.”

Mashable: The Beginner’s Guide to Instagram – “We’re here to share the Instagram basics, whether you’re new to the network or need some additional tips. Better hurry, though — Instagram has undergone such changes in the past few months, who knows what else is in store.”

Mashable: Women Are Bigger Fans of Social Media than Men, Survey Says – “More than 2,000 Brits were questioned for a survey commissioned by BT about the social media habits of men and women. The results showed that more than half of the women surveyed (54%) use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, compared to 34% of men. And of those social media users, more women than men reported they would miss those sites if the Internet ceased to exist.”

Branding Strategy Insider: Social Media Marketing Is An Oxymoron – “Marketing is not exactly a “social” activity. Often, it’s a rude interruption. Regardless, the term “social media marketing” is now firmly established in our current marketing lexicon. Many marketers continue to struggle with determining which discipline owns the social media effort within their organizations. Is it in the domain of advertising, PR, HR, IT? Social media, for all the attention it receives, is still largely a jump ball.”

Strategy+Business: Engagement Isn’t Enough – “As leaders, we often miss critical indicators that can improve the likelihood of organizational and personal success. Consider the ubiquitous employee satisfaction survey, which is usually administered once a year and, as long as the scores are respectable, crossed off the corporate must-do list. Typically, these surveys measure employee engagement levels. But that’s not enough. Employee energy and enablement are as essential to high levels of performance as engagement.” (registration required)

Mashable: Social Media Day Is June 30. How Will You Celebrate? – “On Saturday, June 30, digital enthusiasts will hold meetups across the globe to celebrate the one thing that unites us and keeps us in constant contact: social media. Whether you’re an obsessed Instagram photographer, an endless Pinterest pinner or a ten-times-an-hour tweeter, Social Media Day is a time to recognize the digital revolution that has changed how we live.”

Mashable: How to Get the Most Out of the New Bitly – “No longer a simple URL shortner, Bitly has expanded access to its data archive, improved discovery and introduced an entire redesign, so that you may more easily monitor your shortlink shares. However, “easily” may be a misnomer — reactions to Bitly’s new redesign have been lackluster. That’s why we’re here to sift through the confusion with an overview of the Bitly basics.”

Mashable: Facebook Promoted Posts: A Step-By-Step Guide – “Facebook has started rolling out Promoted Posts for Brand Pages, a new feature that allows businesses to pay for posts to be more predominantly displayed on news feeds. Earlier this year, Facebook shared the statistic that a Brand Page’s content is only seen by 16% of the fans. Facebook’s slew of ad tools and these new Promoted Posts are geared to help businesses reach and engage more of their fan base. A brand can now pay $5, $10, $15 or $20 to “get more people who like your Page to see this post.”

Social Media Today: Should LinkedIn be considered a social media site? – “Remember LinkedIn? The forgotten middle child of the social media world, wedged between Facebook and Google+ – neglected, awkward, and always hitting people up for money. It’s always billed itself as being cut from a different cloth than its competitors; a social media site made for business, job seekers and recruiters alike, and could be used to forge connections with fellow colleagues in your field.”

Social Media Today: The 15 Minute Social Media Workout – “Investing your time in the most beneficial social media strategies can stimulate growth. However, most strategies out there require you to have an entire team of professionals dedicated to monitoring your social media presence.”

NY Times: Ads Give Shout-Outs to Customers by Name – “A new campaign offers a new angle on that by addressing individual consumers in ads that are running not in targeted media but in mainstream media, where everyone can see and hear them.”

Forbes: Are Tablets Becoming Mobile Televisions? – “Another very interesting finding from the report is the incredible success of in-stream mobile advertising, which is defined as “ads that appear in the context of a video, as a commercial break in full episodes or before videos clips, vs. more traditional online advertising.” According to the findings, in-stream video ads are out performing online ads by 31%.”

On the web for the past several weeks and months, the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act currently before Congress, if passed, would have serious consequences for the internet and would change the landscape drasticly.

The real question is how should society best balance the needs of the copyright holders and the public using the internet, when sharing content is increasingly becoming the status quo. There are no easy answers. We all need to be concerned about how this develops. Wikipedia’s FAQ provides a lot of information.

In a talk, Clay Shirky provides some background and brings forth the real issues.

Facebook has over 500 million active users – whether you think your audience is not on Facebook (you’re wrong) or you think Facebook is a fad (so what – it’s big news now), you’re missing a huge opportunity to get information out to your stakeholders, interact with your customers, and even do some service recovery & improve customer service. And let’s not forget Twitter – it reaches around 200 million people!